WSJ: Right to Work Best Thing for Mich. Since Combustion Engine

Wall Street Journal editors are positively giddy over the likelihood that Michigan’s legislature will pass a right-to-work law this week.

“Michigan would become the 24th right-to-work state, and it could be the best thing to happen to its economy since the internal combustion engine,” they write in an editorial.

Both houses of the state legislature approved right-to-work bills last week — the House for private workers and the Senate for both private and public workers, excluding fire and police employees. GOP Gov. Rick Snyder has pledged to sign the law once the two versions are reconciled.

A right-to-work law would be good for Michigan because “a flood of economic evidence shows that right-to-work states have done better at attracting investment and jobs than have more heavily unionized states,” the editorial states.

A West Michigan Policy Forum study shows that of the 10 states with the highest rate of personal income growth, eight have right-to-work laws. That’s helping these states draw in tax payers. Between 2000 and 2010, right-to-work states attracted 5 million people from compulsory union states.

“As impressive as all of this evidence is, the best case for right to work is moral: the right of an individual to choose,” Journal editors write. “Union chiefs want to coerce workers to join and pay dues that they then funnel to politicians who protect union power. Right to work breaks this cycle of government-aided monopoly union power for the larger economic good.”